She supposed she had hoped she was wrong.
As the cars gathered and revved, Jordan asked, “How can we run a Game? There’s no one to guard the exits. They’re all dead.”
“It ruins the fun when you say that, so I’m going to pretend you didn’t,” Hennessy said. “Also, I’ve already thought about that and, as they say, planned accordingly. It’s a straight shot. Starts with a triple flash of the lights and then it’s on for exactly seven miles. No exits in between. If we’re clear when it starts, we should be still by the end. No surprises for us. We’ll have a grand ol’ time.”
“ ‘We.’ Are we racing?”
“Yes.”
“Hennessy,” Jordan said, “there’s a GTR right there. A new nine-one-one behind it. I can’t see that thing two cars back because it’s too damn flat, but my pheromones suggest it’s a McLaren. Are you just planning on watching taillights?”
But she didn’t sound angry; she never sounded angry. She was always up for whatever madness Hennessy was into. Wasn’t this better? Hennessy thought. Wasn’t this how it should have been? Her and Jordan, Hennessy setting that timer on her phone, staying awake for as long as possible, never seeing the Lace.
“We should do this again,” Hennessy said.
“We are doing it again.”
“I mean you-and-me, I mean Jordan Hennessy. You should come with us or I should come light up Boston, except seriously can we do New York instead, because this place is like a hot girl’s elbow pit. It’s fine but there’s not a lot to do.”
“You been sleeping, Heloise?” Jordan asked.
The question was absolutely intolerable. All of it. The content, the timing, the nickname.
“You been painting?” Hennessy countered. “I can’t help but notice some paint on your neck there. Looks like Tyrian purple.” It did not. It looked like ordinary white paint, but Tyrian purple was a better reference to Declan Lynch.
Jordan should have been irritated by Hennessy’s misdirect, but instead her mouth whispered that smile again, the one Hennessy had seen on the sidewalk. She touched her fingers to her neck, feeling the paint, and the sweetness of the touch drove home the meaning of the smile.
She liked that asshole. That boring-ass drone of a prick—she liked him. Hennessy had begged Bryde and Ronan to stop for the Supra, knowing how much Jordan loved it, and here the two of them were on this midnight highway, the Valkyries, surrounded by several million dollars of several thousands of horsepower, and Jordan was smiling over that dough-faced DC pig.
Some part of Hennessy was always looking at that old door without a handle, a keyhole with no key in it.
“Ready-set-go,” Hennessy said.
She flashed her lights. One. Two. Three.
The cars bolted.
As Jordan had predicted, the Supra was nowhere near as fast as the speediest of the contenders. The tight pack swiftly loosened as the fit got fitter and the slow stayed slow.
Jordan petted the dash of the Supra as if to make the car feel better about not leading the pack, and then, in a different sort of voice, she asked, “Did you dream me without memories of Jay?”
The thing about the ley line getting stronger was that Hennessy felt she could see the Lace even with her eyes open sometimes.
“There’s a neat trick we’re going to do up here,” Hennessy said.
Lacy shapes thrown by aftermarket headlights.
“Hennessy.” Jordan drew her back. “Did you?”
Lacy threads of pine needles caught under the Supra’s wiper.
Hennessy went on. “It’s a fancy thing I nicked off Bryde. Fancy little shit. It’s got some fun side effects.”
Lacy shadows crisscrossing behind the streetlights racing by.
“Hennessy—”
Lacy eyelashes blink-blink-blinking. It looked like the patterns her mother’s lamps had thrown across her studio wall.
Rolling the window down, Hennessy scooped the little stolen silver orb out of the door pocket. She rolled it in her palm the way she’d seen Bryde do when he wanted the orb to fly faster than it was being thrown, and then she hurled it into the dark.
For a moment there was no result. Just taillights of cars all about to claim faster times than the Supra.
The little orb zipped ahead of them. It unfolded. The cloud burst free.
And then there was chaos.
The cars spun. One here, one there. They smashed into each other. They nosed into the ditch. A Subaru flipped right over in the air. A Corvette spun and then slid backward nearly as fast as the Supra was going forward. It went for yards and yards. There was a high-pitched noise happening during all of this that keened and keened and keened, and Hennessy could not decide if it was her or Jordan or tires screaming.
There were supercars everywhere, dazzled across the highway. Some nosed into others, the headlights pointed every which way.
“We win,” Hennessy said. She eased the Supra to a stop and pulled up the parking brake.
Jordan was out of the car immediately, hands linked round the back of her neck, surveying the damage. Hennessy could tell she was horrified, and for some reason, this was great, this was perfect, this was just what Hennessy wanted. This felt much better than Jordan’s vague smile, her wild joy.
Hennessy gestured grandly. “The prize is whichever we want. Which one do you fancy?”
Jordan turned to her. “This isn’t a dream!”
“I know,” Hennessy said, “because I could control everything here.”
“Someone could be dead here.” Jordan paced and then jogged across the asphalt, ducking her head to look in at this driver and that. They all gazed at her and past her, expressions swimming.
Hennessy droned, “Asshole dies in a street race, news at eleven.”
“This isn’t a dream!”
“How about the Lambo?” Hennessy asked. “I feel like the Lambo would be the most fun.”
Jordan threw open the door of a sweet little busted-up Porsche as bright as Ronan’s sky blade. The driver was slumped over the wheel, which had crumpled in enough to press him back into his seat. His eyes looked at nothing, but it was hard to say if that was because of Bryde’s dreamt orb or because he was injured.
“I don’t want to steal cars and fuck shit up, Hennessy!” Jordan snapped, rummaging until she found the seat controls. She worked to get the seat back enough to tug the man free. Hennessy didn’t move a muscle as Jordan threw all of her weight to pull him out. “I’ve got a life here. I want to live my life. My real life. Art and growing up and not this.”
“Nice for you,” Hennessy said.
“Why the hell are you being this way?” Jordan demanded. “This is what you came all this way for? The Game?”
Hennessy looked at her as she propped the driver up against the wheel of his car and went to look at the next one. “I wish you were dead.”
This spun Jordan neat as a top. “What did you say?”
“I wish you’d died with the others,” Hennessy said. It was awful, it was terrible, her mouth wouldn’t stop saying it, her expression wouldn’t stop being scathing. “I wish you were all dead so it would just be me and I could do what I wanted. I can feel you dragging me down every second of every day. I’m so fucking tired of you.”